Gayatri Adi is an award-winning theatre producer based in Tāmaki Makaurau.

Gayatri began her journey in theatre in 2018, as an actor in productions by Prayas Theatre Company, New Zealand’s largest South Asian theatre company. She performed in Dara (2018), First World Problems (2018), A Fine Balance (2019, co-production with Auckland Theatre Company) and Yātrā (2020).

From 2019 - 2021, Gayatri worked at the critically acclaimed Indian Ink Theatre Company as their Producer: Marketing & Sales. She currently is a freelance producer and marketer and has worked with various performing arts companies such as Auckland Live, Oryza and Basement Theatre.

Gayatri’s first show as a producer was Have You Ever Been With An Asian Womxn? in 2020, which was presented as part of the Auckland Fringe Festival and won the ‘Unfuck The World’ award at the festival. Gayatri then went on to produce An Extraordinary Meeting, which was presented as part of Auckland Fringe in 2021 and won the ‘Community Engagement’ award. Also in 2021, Gayatri produced the well-received theatre show Boom Shankar which premiered at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival and subsequently enjoyed a sold-out season at the Basement Theatre later that year.

In 2019 Gayatri was accepted into Auckland Theatre Company’s Young Writers Table programme where she developed her first theatre script XOX. In 2020, XOX was accepted into Proudly Asian Theatre’s Fresh off the Page programme where she was mentored by 2020 Arts Laureate Ahi Karunaharan.

Through the Ockham Residency, Gayatri plans to continue developing XOX in addition to providing space and time to various projects that support fellow theatre practitioners’ work, nurture emerging artists and develop communities around creative practice. Such projects include a writers’ room to provide development opportunities for writers and rehearsal space for her theatre productions.